Serial bank robber gets more than 20 years in prison for 11th heist: ‘I don’t have an excuse.’

Just over a year after a judge granted Clifford Uptegrove an early release from prison amid the pandemic, he burst into an Umpqua Bank in eastern Oregon with a gun, pointed it at a teller and demanded cash.

It was his 11th bank robbery.

He was 59 years old.

Uptegrove was on supervised release at the time, having served 16 and a half years in prison of what had originally been a nearly 21-year sentence. A federal judge in Washington had granted him compassionate release during the pandemic due to his age and his asthma condition.

On Thursday, Uptegrove was back in a federal courtroom.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Nyhus urged a 25-year sentence for his latest armed bank heist, saying he's "nothing more than a violent and dangerous man," when he's outside the confines of a jail or prison.

His defense lawyer, Lisa Ludwig, argued for 20 years, telling the court that Uptegrove didn't have strong supervision when he last was released from prison and was a product of his upbringing — a father "who raised him to rob banks and do drugs."

Uptegrove, dressed in a peach-colored prison T-shirt, stood before U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez and said what he did that day in Hermiston "made him sick."

"I'm responsible for the things that I've done," the now-61-year-old said. "I don't have an excuse."

On Dec. 17, 2021, Uptegrove, his head covered by the hood of his black-and-gray jacket, a mask concealing his face and dark gloves on his hands, burst into the bank and pointed a black handgun at a teller.

"Give me all your (expletive) money....large money, all the $100s," he ordered. "All of it!"

He ran out, trying to cradle bundles of cash in his arms but leaving a trail of dollars in his wake. Thinking he had lost the keys to his getaway car, he pointed his gun at a retired couple's pickup truck that had just emerged from the bank's drive-through lane, the prosecutor said. The driver refused to give up his truck as his wife ran out of it screaming.

Uptegrove managed to make it to a car he had left in a neighboring Les Schwab parking lot and discovered he had left the keys on the seat and sped away.

After a brief police chase, Uptegrove pulled over and was arrested that day, Dec. 17, 2021. The car belonged to the parents of his son's girlfriend.

Police said he made off with $13,690 in cash from the bank and was found with a loaded gun. He had driven two hours from his home in Yakima, Wash., to commit the burglary at the bank in Hermiston, Nyhus said.

Once arrested, he complained he was suffering from asthma and was taken to a hospital. While he waited for medical care, he said he was recovering from a heroin high.

***

Several nights later, he talked about the bank robbery with his sister on recorded calls from the Umatilla County Jail.

She lamented that she had heard on TV news that he was in trouble once again, having waved a gun around in the bank.

"I pulled it out and pointed it," he corrected her. "I wasn't waving it around. You don't wave guns, you point it at people."

His sister said how devastating it must've been for the teller and others in the bank.

Uptegrove downplayed his actions, saying he was "hardly in there — about 15 seconds."

Uptegrove went on to tell his sister that he wasn't going to shoot the driver of the pickup truck he attempted to steal, so he then turned his gun on himself.

"I put the gun to my own head, and I couldn't do that either," he told her. "I was going away forever, and I was thinking, man, I just want to die. So then I decided I was gonna run and get away."

He said if he hadn't stumbled and fallen, he would have gotten away. He also claimed he almost outran the police during the car chase.

"My little Chrysler, destroyed 'em... I was a mile ahead of them when I stopped," he said.

Days later, on another phone call with his sister, he told her he had learned a lesson from his latest crime: "Don't rob banks with drive-through windows," he said. "Both times I did that, I got caught."

"How about just don't rob banks?" his sister replied.

***

At the sentencing hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez seized on the sister's statement, calling it one of the more insightful remarks from the jail calls the prosecutors provided to him to review.

"Maybe you shouldn't rob banks," the judge said, as he sentenced Uptegrove to 23 years and four months in prison.

He said Uptegrove violated the trust another federal judge had put in him when she let him out of prison early in his last case in November 2020.

"This is serious business," Hernandez said.

Ludwig, the defense lawyer, argued that her client was suffering from a drug-induced psychosis at the time of the bank robbery, believing people were after him as he experienced hallucinations.

But Hernandez said that didn't absolve what he did.

"People that get guns put in their faces, they don't care about what caused that," he said. "That doesn't matter to them what your problem was."

Whether Uptegrove was high or not, the damage to the teller and the retired couple who had a gun pointed at them is the same, Hernandez said.

"Their sense of security is forever violated," the judge continued. "They're terrified. They're terrorized. ... And that simply doesn't go away."

Uptegrove's sister Carol Gibson took the witness stand and tearfully testified how her brother and siblings grew up with an alcoholic dad who gave them drugs at a young age and showed her brother how to rob banks. She said she recalled taking a sip from her dad's beer can when she was 3 years old, and her father shooting drugs into Clifford when he was only 12.

"It was a battle growing up," said Gibson, who struggled with drug addiction but has been clean for 10-plus years and works as a drug-alcohol counselor now.

During the nearly 17 years her brother had been in custody, their mother and three other siblings died, Gibson said. He didn't see any family for 10 years during his prior prison stint.

"How does somebody come out after doing all that time, for so long and just be okay?" she asked.

Ludwig argued that Uptegrove didn't get a high level of federal supervision after his compassionate release from prison in late 2020, which contributed to his downfall.

In November 2020, Seattle's U.S. Senior District Judge Marsha J. Pechman found "extraordinary and compelling" reasons to justify his compassionate release, noting his age of 57 and his medical condition of asthma that put him at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 and suffering severe illness. He also had completed several self-help and educational programs in custody and had a clean disciplinary record the prior 9 years, the judge noted. He served 16 and a half years of the prior sentence of 20 years and eight months he was given for a 2004 armed bank robbery.

Hernandez said he found it remarkable that Uptegrove's remaining siblings and friends, who were at the hearing, have stood behind him with their love and support, "through all his garbage."

Statistically, Hernandez noted, people at Uptegrove's age generally age out of crime.

"But we were wrong," Hernandez said. "This should never have happened."

- Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, follow her on X , or on LinkedIn .